He was working a college game when a flagrant foul was called on a player who slammed an airborne opponent to the floor.

The play-by-play man asked if perhaps the defender was just playing good, hard basketball.

“It depends,” said Walton, “on whether the kid who was fouled is your kid.”

Many solutions to what ails us can be reached through kids.

This spring training, Goose Gossage, working with the Yankees, was simplistically dismissed and even condemned as “an angry old white man” for his indelicate, i.e., vulgar, spew about how baseball indulges what he regards as insufferable:

Home run-posing, including flamboyant, ain’t-I-great bat-flipping — specifically as demonstrated by Toronto’s Jose Bautista — indifferent base running, especially to first, and all other acts of immodesty and less-than winning baseball.

To that, Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi called Gossage on the carpet to tell him “the game has changed.” Yet, those who rationalize and excuse the steady move toward minimalist, immodest play among professionals never complete the claim. Has it changed for the better?

From Miami, where he hosts TV and radio shows, ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, a Cuban-American, mocked and smeared Gossage, even suggesting that he’s a racist as his advocacy to play “the right way” should be interpreted as playing “the white way.”

So then, what should we make of Rougned Odor’s roundhouse to Bautista’s head Sunday during a Rangers-Blue Jays game? After all, both are Latinos.

Apparently, Odor was among those Rangers who would have preferred that Bautista played “the right way” or what Le Batard ridiculed as “the white way.” By Le Batard’s assessment, Odor, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, behaved like an angry old white man and probable racist.

So maybe, as seen Sunday in Texas, in one quick, violent episode, the game hadn’t changed. A showboating slugger was slugged.

Back to kids. Would Le Batard encourage or blithely indulge the kids in his life if — perhaps from watching too much ESPN — they displayed conspicuous immodesty within the games they played, especially team sports?

Would he instruct or allow his kid to preen and showboat every time he got a hit, caught a pass, made a basket, scored a goal?

I doubt it. Why? Because he knows it would be wrong. And to teach or excuse wrong as right — and even good — is the work of those with social disorders. So why sell bad as good on TV and radio?

Gossage’s sin, beyond cussing, was that he didn’t choose to do what most do — pander. He was unaware or wasn’t frightened that in such practical truth-telling one risks being labeled “Angry old white man,” the accent on racist.

Le Batard, similar to Michael Kay Show panelist Peter Rosenberg, also mocked those who were disturbed by Dwyane Wade’s indefensible disrespect in continuing to shoot baskets as the Canadian national anthem played before a playoff game against the Raptors.

Back to kids. Would Le Batard and Rosenberg encourage or allow the kids in their lives, the kids they brought to a game, to do as they pleased while the national anthem played?

Again, I doubt that. Why? Again, because they would know it’s wrong.

So why pander? Why defend the indefensible, why ridicule those who would advocate common decency and right over wrong?

When did immodesty and disrespect for all except one’s own self become sports virtues? Where did I go wrong? Here I raised my kids as I was raised.

There was a wonderful character, Gilbert, on “Leave It To Beaver” who would exclaim, “Gee, Beav, if I did that my dad would clobber me!” Same here, Gilbert.

Keith Hernandez or Nostradamus calling Mets games?

Keith HernandezSNY

What’s the difference between Tarot cards and baseball cards?

Tuesday on SNY, Washington’s Ben Revere was called out trying to steal second. As attempted steals often result in close calls, we next awaited the results of the replay challenge.

Waiting for the call to be upheld, Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez passed on another opportunity to identify this application of the replay rule and the overwhelming majority of its applications, as having nothing to do with its intent: to reverse egregiously incorrect calls.

So now, with the bases empty Jayson Werth singled, prompting Hernandez to another of his fantastic, eerie predestinations: “So that’s a base hit and an RBI, right there, if that call at second was overturned.”

Good grief. Is he unaware that everything — everything — changes, starting, in Tuesday’s case, with Noah Syndergaard pitching from the windup instead of the stretch?

Hernandez has been making such hallucinatory claims for years. Nurse! One for each of us! And given that the result is predetermined, who won Saturday’s Preakness? Come on Keith, baby needs new shoes; out with it!

WOR’s Mets radio is only slightly better than WFAN’s Yankees radio in that some national anthems are heard before we’re told who performed and who sponsored them. But in most cases, it’s the same as Yankees radio: The sponsorships are sold, the performers are identified, the anthem is unheard. That’s as money-ugly as it gets.

The common decency solution: If you sell/exploit the anthem, make sure it’s heard. Otherwise, stop selling/exploiting it.

Howie Rose a class act all the way

Howie Rose, 20 years the Islanders’ TV voice, is packing it in before he ever allows exhaustion to short, even once, this town’s hockey and baseball fans or his own expectations. He’s a pro. And you can put that in the book!

With Monday’s Red Sox-Royals game postponed, ESPN picked up FOX South’s Braves-Pirates, which included all kinds of FOX promos, including one for the show hosted by self-removed ESPN regular Colin Cowherd.

By the Book: Mets reliever Addison Reed worked Tuesday’s eighth inning. Eight pitches: groundout, strikeout, strikeout. But he’s not the closer, so out he went!

President Obama should have advised Rutgers grads to consider careers in weight training. Rutgers’ position as weightlifting instructor — just for the football team — starts at $260,000.

Reader Keith Ueltzen asks if NBCSN, during Game 1 of Sharks-Blues, showed so many shots of San Jose coach Peter DeBoer because a large-breasted woman wearing a low-cut, highly inadequate shirt was seated in the front row to DeBoer’s right. Coach? I didn’t see any coach.